Word: plasticity
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...tried to fall asleep in Lamont yesterday, on the fifth floor in one of those cubicles formed by the walls of books. There I was, lounging in a teal plastic-leather chair with my feet propped on an even less comfortable wooden one. My head was resting on the arm, poised for slumber, but all I could do was stare at the Cambridge History of Iran on the shelf in front of me. Lamont just isn't equipped for napping...
...assent of those who have seen the heavens through Galileo's telescope." The Seminarians circulated papers among themselves and met twice a year to vote on more than 2,000 separate pieces of scripture. They conceived a mediagenic means of voting: for each Gospel verse, each voter dropped a plastic bead in a bucket. The bead's color signified the scholar's opinion. The book quoted one participant's description: "Red: That's Jesus! Pink: Sure sounds like Jesus. Gray: Well, maybe. Black: There's been some mistake." The Five Gospels (the fifth one was Thomas') consisted of the holy...
Stop-motion animation, in which each character and prop made of clay or plastic must be adjusted 24 times for every second of film, is a technique that requires a masochistic devotion. Park has that and more: a storyteller's genius for incident and personality. Wallace--an airplane-headed, cheese-loving bachelor--and the silent Gromit share a village home, less as man and dog than as two longtime companions stolidly accepting of the other's quirks. They are, in a way, the definitive English odd couple...
...would be artificial and unreal if your work did not become very different too." One consistent element in Koolhaas' buildings, however, is a relaxed attitude toward detailing and a willingness to use extremely cheap materials. In Kunsthal, an art gallery in Rotterdam, he used unfinished concrete and corrugated plastic for walls, metal grids for flooring, naked fluorescent tubes for lighting and tree trunks for pillars and a balustrade. "Architecture is always the encounter of vision and circumstance," he says. The Dutch, Koolhaas explains, don't believe in spending a lot of money on buildings. "So there's no choice...
...even when his clients have money, Koolhaas doesn't spend it on materials. The Villa Dall'Ava, outside Paris, cost $485,000, yet the architect still used orange plastic webbing, familiar from construction sites, for a balustrade on the roof. One room on the ground floor is surrounded on three sides by glass, which can be opened to the outside or enclosed by a curtain--almost like a hospital bed--for more intimacy. The clients asked for a "masterpiece," and they got an adventure. Neighbors, on the other hand, so opposed the plan that the house had to be fought...